Limits and
connection: A naturalistic view of yourself places you completely
and irrevocably in the physical world, a fully-connected, card-carrying
participant in the unfolding of the material universe. Your life is bounded by
birth and death, your consciousness solely the product of your brain, your will
the product of thousands of influences, some traceable to the long natural
history of our evolution. If your limits are made clear under naturalism, so too
is your lineage. The first might keep you humble, the second might give you a
sense of place as unbounded as the universe described by science. See the
Spirituality page for more on this.

Pride and shame:
Seeing that your behavior arises on its own - out of your particular
biologically given traits and your particular career through life, not from a
non-material controlling self - might pry you loose from excessive pride and
shame. Your successes resulted from personal characteristics given to you in
their entirety by nature and nurture, combined with circumstances in which you
could express your talents. Likewise, your failures arose not from some weakness
of will that could have been otherwise, but out of conditions which can be
understood as the natural unfolding of physical and psychological processes.
Anyone with the same internal and external circumstances would have done as
well, or as badly. Understanding this won’t change the fact that you enjoy
success and regret failure, but it may loosen the grip of ego and ease the
burden of self-blame.

Blame and envy:
Just as your own behavior can be understood as the natural unfolding of physical
and psychological processes, so can the behavior of others, and your attitudes
toward them might change in the light of this understanding. Seeing exactly how
someone got to be the way they are, and knowing that their virtues and faults
arise out of circumstances, not from an autonomous, non-physical agent, can help
to reduce the time spent on unproductive blaming and envy.

The threat of
fatalism: If you don't have
contra-causal free will, what about fatalism? See
The Flaw of Fatalism to see why giving up free will need not, and
usually cannot, lead to a fatalistic passivity.
For reassurances about other worries that arise when
considering naturalism, see
here.

Social consequences

Behavioral Health: Mental illness, addiction, obesity, and
other behavioral disorders are too often misunderstood
as failures of will. Instead, we can understand
dysfunctionalbehavior as
fully caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Thisunderstanding reduces the stigma associated with behavioral disorders,
while pointingthe way toward effective treatment.
Naturalism supports the development of
psychotherapeuticand self-change techniques that
apply a causal view of behavior. Properly presented,
challenging conventional wisdom about the self and free will
is apowerful means to increase life
satisfaction and deepen interpersonal relationships. See
Addiction and Behavioral Health.

Punishment:
Since the retributive justification for punishment is based
largely on the notion that behavior is originated by a causally autonomous self,
the motive to impose such punishment may diminish once it is seen that such a
self does not exist. In particular, support may drop for punitive measures
such as the death penalty or prison sentences without rehabilitative amenities.
More attention will be paid to the conditions which create crime, and to
approaches that redeem offenders instead of further brutalizing them. See
the
Criminal
Justice page.

Social Policies:
If persons are not self-made, but entirely the product of genetic and
environmental conditions, this means that their virtues and faults are not a
matter of will or self-chosen character. Rather,
individuals are shaped by circumstances that can themselves be modified to
produce people that are happier, more productive, more creative, and less
needy. The myth of ultimate self-determination (contra-causal
free will) blocks the design of a more humane society by blaming persons
for their shortcomings instead of understanding the conditions that create
them. Likewise, this myth touts material success as the triumph of
free will, so that it's thought to be justifiably restricted to those who
"deserve" to succeed. Under naturalism, the allocation
of resources is understood not to reflect what is deserved
on the basis of self-caused virtue, but what is needed
for each of us to live a desirable life. Therefore social policies will
be encouraged which seek to maximize the opportunities for each person's
development, independent of differences ininherited talent or social status. See the Social Justice page.